Kerr was one of the lawyers for alleged MySpace "cyberbully" Lori Drew.[9] His blog contributions at The Volokh Conspiracy often focus on developments in internet privacy law. He has been regarded as a leading scholar on Fourth Amendment jurisprudence in electronic communications and surveillance. Kerr was repeatedly cited in the Ninth Circuit's 2008 opinion Quon v. Arch Wireless Operating Co., Inc.,[10][11] which held that users have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the content of text messages and e-mails. The Supreme Court later took up the case, as Ontario v. Quon, and unanimously reversed.

In response to a 2011 comment by Chief Justice John Roberts criticizing the irrelevancy of legal scholarship for focusing on issues such as Immanuel Kant's influence on 18th century evidentiary approaches in Bulgaria, Kerr wrote a short, humorous paper on the topic in 2015, finding that such influence was highly improbable.[13]

Kerr filed an amicus brief in support of the United States in Carpenter v. United States, a case concerning the government's seizure of an individual’s historical cell phone locations records without a warrant.